Frank Zappa
One Measurement Matches All: fiftieth Anniversary Tremendous Deluxe Version
ZAPPA/UMe
Oct 08, 2025
Net Unique
Following the success of 1974’s Apostrophe (’) album, excursions, and his first Billboard Sizzling 100 single, Frank Zappa was disenchanted to see ’75’s One Measurement Matches All not obtain the eye that he felt it deserved. Perhaps it didn’t comprise a single like “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” however Zappa had an album that he was desperate to share upon its launch. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the five-disc Tremendous Deluxe Version presents One Measurement Matches All in thorough element, providing a perfect platform to discover this comparatively ignored gem.
That includes the acclaimed mid-’70s lineup of the Moms of Invention, Zappa was on an ongoing roll with this album, with gamers who may meet his exacting and entertaining compositional requirements. As “Inca Roads,” “Florentine Pogen,” “Andy,” and “Couch” discovered their manner onto live performance setlists as much as his closing tour in 1988, Zappa clearly noticed One Measurement Matches All as a worthy and enduring achievement. Operating with a lyric a couple of suspected alien touchdown, “Inca Roads” showcases the total band in its expansive album-opener. The place “Couch No. 1” performs like a stunning instrumental TV theme tune, “Couch No. 2” picks again it up later within the album however with Zappa singing playfully in German, as if he merely couldn’t go away it as a straight tune. Together with loads of the humor that one would possibly anticipate within the lyrics and supply with a Zappa album, the manic “Andy” is among the many tracks the place Zappa takes a notable guitar highlight, and “Florentine Pogen” is however one instance of how the seamless interaction of this Moms lineup approaching Zappa’s advanced materials was like a household’s instinct.
The set spans 58 tracks over 4 CDs and a Blu-ray audio disc, with a number of mixes of the album in addition to outtakes, alternate edits, and unedited bonus vault masters. A beforehand unreleased and full Rotterdam, Netherlands present options songs from One Measurement Matches All together with “Dupree’s Paradise,” “Cosmik Particles, and far more. Additionally included with the Tremendous Deluxe version is a 36-page guide with detailed essays from Zappa “Vaultmeister” Joe Travers, music journalist David Fricke, and Moms vibraphonist/percussionist Ruth Underwood. The album can also be accessible in a number of vinyl configurations.
Whereas it might have dismayed Zappa to see One Measurement Matches All stalling on the Billboard album charts simply inside the highest 30, Sweden apparently had a special opinion, sending it into their High 5. The set nods to that acknowledgment, providing two stay One Measurement tracks carried out earlier than an appreciative crowd in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1974 (together with a madly rocking “Ralph Stuffs His Sneakers”), when the album was nonetheless in its recording levels. (www.zappa.com)
Writer score: 8/10
